The present invention refers to a support and control device for opening or closing a grip element in two parts.
When manipulator devices are used, which allow reaching to positions that are not reachable, or anyway reachable with difficulty, it is usually extremely useful to grip various objects or elements. This can occur both from necessity, for example in the case of devices for picking fruit from a tree, and from convenience, for example in the case of devices for picking up objects from the ground. In the following, reference will be made in particular to a support device for a rake, permitting its closure for gripping and holding leaves and like objects. A similar device can, of course, be applied to any other means.
It is known that closable rakes comprise two parts, symmetrical in structure, mutually hinged and connected to a tubular handle. The handle supports a closing-control for the two structure parts; this is composed of a sleeve to which the first ends of a pair of cables are fixed. The opposite ends of each of these cables are each fixed to one of the two structure parts so that, when the sleeve is made to translate along the handle by an operator, pulling or loosening the cables, this causes the closing or opening of the two parts of the rake.
This type of traditional support device is notoriously difficult and inconvenient to use since the cables extend substantially along a coaxial direction and/or parallel to the handle and to a rotation axis of the two structure parts of the rake. This, allied to the fact that the cables are directly connected to the two structure parts, means that considerable force is necessary for driving the device. In addition, the traditional support device structure is complex and, usually, unreliable.